The Wet Part in the Front of It

The Wet Part in the Front of It

       by Generous Portion (Son of Bliss Carman)

                        general patton

                        waved his baton

                        start of the korean war

                        started what

                        then turned to treason

                        ousness right up until

                        their cand'ate gore

Neatly sipped, thought Ramsay as he helped himself to the last bit in the bottom of the glass. Tomorrow at 8:00 I will pour myself one of the same size. Yes, that's what I will do. Uh huh. With that he leapt to the window to see what might be developing there. A Girly Wagon had stopped beneath his apartment to fetch mulch from the greenhouse. Certain men of low rank and big proportion were making quick work of the pile beside the drive. Their shovels quirked into the mud and brought up clumps of it, excess streaming down beside. Flash, flash, flash went the hands, arms and spades. Nostradamus, Ramsay thought, and returned to his table and tilted the glass one more time before rinsing it under the tap near the door.  He drew on his mackinaw and got himself outside.

       Earlier with his drink the book that found itself before him concerned a Kilpatrick the Feeble, written by the warden of a prison in Kackpesh about the turn of the second last century.  Ramsay read the first pages with zeal and delight. In them the author, a General Zni, veteran of a certain war between the Uzbeks and the Georgians, introduced the theory that clear control of an army was a myth. Control over the variousnesses of an army was a hope and a teaching tool of the military academies but it never actually came about in practice. Men, soldiers, civilians and all individuals attached to the military on the battlefield always chose for themselves most of the time and the atrocities in prisons, on the field itself, and in P.O.W. camps were the product of self-interest.

       By the twentieth page Ramsay lost interest in the theory and turned his gaze toward the library window. He was at the library now. He had taken his book with him. The library was an old one and the dusty glass with the sun coming through entranced him and made him randy. He leapt up and cat-walked toward the window to see what lay below him in the street. A Girly Wagon disappearing around a corner carrying what looked like a load of mulch. Further down the same street a group of men gesticulated wildly as if they were discussing something of grave merit. Ramsay decided to go and encounter the group and involve himself in their discussion. He did so. He left the front entrance of the building and made his may down the street to the place where the men stood. They were still energetically engaged. One, the older gentleman, of Italian origins as his accent betrayed, called out for the death of all chickens.

       "They are such a nuisance!" he proclaimed and drove his arm downward twice toward the pavement as a way of indicating the violent end of the whole mass of them. Strong coffee smells from his breath wafted about as he spoke. A wagon clicked by on metal wheels, the horse peeing and farting down the avenue.

       "Women, too," a younger one announced and drove his arm upwards with vehemence. His breath was wine and tomatoes. His eyes were red as if he had just awakened from a bad sleep or suffered from the indulgences of the night before. He must be a herdsman with hair like that, Ramsay speculated in wise silence. Good grief, the men you find in the city on a Monday morning, he thought as the middle-aged one broke in, slamming his arms both up and down twice for emphasis.

       "Dogs get the better of us and we let them!" he shouted out. The others listened to him for a moment. "If I had the will and the money I would devote the rest of my natural life to their extermination!" The six men stood waiting for him to continue and explain himself. He did not, but then added, "The whole shitty mess of the house pets that the widows, single girls and spinsters bring out evenings to shit on the sidewalks where a drunk cannot help but lay down in it and wake up in the morning smelling like a kennel is the worst of it!" The others listened with something between amusement and astonishment.

       "I tell you, if you have ears to hear," the middle-aged one continued, "get rid of the whole reeking mess of pups and their dames and you will rid the world of the most hideous sort of danger and a defilement!"

       "What would you do?" asked the oldest one who had not yet spoken but who Ramsay could tell was generally venerated among these few. The old man stank, speaking of stinky dogs and their runny assholes. Garlic from the days before mixed with garlic from that morning's breakfast floated about them with such perturbation that all of them turned their heads to this side and that until the tainted air gradually drifted south.

       "What the hell do you think I'd do?" the dog-hater said. He drove one arm upwards and the other downwards with such force that the men stood respectful for a minute while he built up the momentum to tell them with more exactness. He puffed out his chest, cocked his wrists to flex his biceps, and then fell to with gusto. Hungry,. the men about him wolfed down his analysis.

       "I would take the first puppy I met on the street and I'd stomp on him, face first in the cement. But," he continued, speaking in a hurry in case the others might accuse him of methods too kind in the present circumstances, "I would walk early mornings till I came upon a pile of  fresh dog shit, and that would take about three steps. See, look about you. There, and there and there, within our eyesight and the reach of our very noses, three piles of it here! I would walk till I found the first dog turds and carrying them behind my back I would climb up to the apartment directly above it where I could safely deduct that the excrementor resided, I would knock on the door, and I would say with politeness, 'Ma'am, do you own a puppy?' and when she answered in the affirmative, I would ask to see the cute little canine. Then, when she brought me her pretty poodle, stroking it with maternal possessiveness, I would say, 'Ma'am, I just wish to bring to your attention the pile of feces outside your door across the way where each evening your puppy drops his lunch and where each morning another drunk must awake to the realization that all day he will be smelling himself in the rancidness of its droppings. I wish also for you to take note of the following action.' With that, I would take up the dog and stroke its fur, bringing him to a certain state of arousal by reaching beneath it and fondling there, too. Then I would wrench his digit right out from under him, dislocating it from its body with one vicious pull. While the mistress screamed her dismay at the loss of the site of her pleasure, and his, I would take its nose between thumb and finger, like this, and pull off the rubbery, wet part on the front of it with a great swipe of my hand. Next, I would put my boots to its face and dislocate its jaw, while at the same time driving my fingers deep into its eye sockets. Having done these things, I would leave without a word. She would have got my message and the powdered pudendum would decline in the future from defecating across the street."

       So saying, the vehement verbalist, vendor of often fresh vegetables down the block, glanced about him and noticed many signs of approval. Ramsay excused himself and walked home for a nap. He felt tired. Plus he anticipated next day's sipping of whiskey. Ah, Whiskey, he eulogized to no one, how kind you are to me.  

Time

Time
     by Earned a Modest Salary as a Sessional Instructor    

     at the University of Manitoba 

      

"What did he mean, Ryan, do you think, that a thinker has only one idea in his lifetime?" Silence. Ryan looks at me, smiles a little, unaccustomed to being singled out, red starting to form under his eyes, and shakes his head. One of the smartest students in the class, he feels both too conspicuous to say anything and inadequate because unacquainted with the text.

       "Mandy?"

       "Don?" Don at the back listens to everything but says little, ever. He wears a baseball cap curled around his eyes and looks down except when something interests him. His face lifts for a moment until he realizes that he has been noticed.

       "Anyone?"

       "Well," I say, "he meant, I believe, that the thinker discovers early what preoccupies him all of his life. Not only new ideas excite the philosopher as if he machined them daily out of some raw idea material like plasticine that he worked for the purpose of entertaining himself.  The philosopher / thinker (same thing) chooses to be one only because he finds himself haunted by an idea of which he longs to rid himself and he attempts that through writing a series of texts that explain the world to the world as the new idea must restructure it. Much more difficult than explaining the intricacies of the internal combustion engine, or the arithmetic of space flight, or the exact construction of the genetic system, philosophy's new idea requires the entire world to be reexamined."

       "Yes, Mandy?" Mandy is not unintelligent, but she waits till so and so much has been explained about the idea to hand that she feels safe and unexposed enough to contribute.

       "Sir," (only careful, cautious students address me as "Sir,") "does that mean that the world is reinvented by the philosopher?"

       "Can you elaborate? What do you mean, exactly?"

       "Well, you said that the world must be entirely re -explained. That means to me that it is a new world he makes, I think."

       "A good point, indeed, but I don't think that it entirely explains the dilemma for the thinker. What exactly makes this enterprise so difficult for him? If he was inventing a new world, imagining a brand new place, which he created somehow through language, we would have something largely unrecognizable--Kafka did it. In part. Maybe in whole--but we would not recognize that world. Its borders and objects would at best appear only vaguely familiar. The philosopher must actually re-explain the old world so that it remains old and not new. Its newness is that, instead of having been an inadequate world, which his brilliance has recently made better than it was, relying thus on the common reasoning that the new improves the old, he has made the old world older than it had become, more ordinary than it has become to be seen from its future, and more clearly recognizable that it was in that future." I inspect myself as I speak, and my inward being smells unwashed. It needs a good scrubbing, I think, and then I think that I always regret any lengthy contribution I myself make. Unlike Mandy, though, I go on into the burning house hoping to stumble through on the other side. I do not stumble, or mean "stumble" as less or inadequate, but go on until what smells no longer makes me feel my own abjection but delivers me rather from it into a sense of the inevitability of the adequacy of my constructions. Stammering is more than smooth speaking, I have often thought to myself, I think now. Smoothness of speech is less than stammering.

       "A great difficulty faces him," I continue, beginning to be aware of the clock and the time left in this lecture. "Everything needs translation. What we once saw with wool before our eyes we now see-- because of him, because of his writings--though fine corrective lenses. The reality of past individuals' worlds and history's particulars suddenly come before us with startling and unsettling clarity. Birth, life, death and the afterlife confront us smiling, beckoning to us as a prostitute might on a side street in Chatemoq. We wish to turn and run, knowing so little of welcoming woman's state, feeling such moral uncertainties and certainties. Pre history, history and after history have clamoured in the thinker to be freed of our common false and vague interpretations of them. He brings before us everything; he takes on responsibility for all that was, is and will be; he feels overwhelmed. That is why, Mandy, he frantically works for forty years on his project of love and then dies young. Often without marrying. Often without experiencing sexual union, ever. Atlas never wished as fervently as he does to be freed of his burden. At such a tender age to be so saddled by a new idea! The heart pities him. We pity the thinker!"

       I ask my students the time. Eight minutes left in the period. "Any questions?" None. "For Thursday study his notions of pity," I say. A few students, the three on the left who like this class a lot, I know, by the fact that they regularly linger afterward, whisper amongst each other as they stand by the long table. The empty rock sample cases at the back of the classroom reflect the light of the fluorescents. The board needs erasing and I do that. I walk to my office in the limpid blue light of eleven o'clock a.m. A tree of sparrows buzzes. The sand on the sidewalk makes walking a bit treacherous for someone my age. Going past the cafeteria I am startled by the smell of Tuesday's meatloaf. In the tunnel students file past one at a time or two abreast. The clock in the administration-building tower rings out the hout.    

Tolkien and the Land of Mord

Tolkien and the Land of Mord

      by Brith Neath (Nasalitis) Big Daddy                                

      Douggie Doggie Doo

when you sing a happy song

and all creation sings along

don't forget to thank the lord

for giving you your brand new ford

beating plowshare into sword

helping you across the word

all the beauties of a fiord

gross indecency with gord

coinage from the days of yore

tolkien and the land of mord

shelter and for room and board

Singing has always struck a chord with me. I am now the choirmaster of the Virginia State University Select Madrigal Octet. We tour in America, sing in venues as large as Maple Leaf Gardens and as small as individual churches. The affairs at which we perform range from full-fledged concerts to picnics in the park.

      I grew up singing. I sang in church as a preschooler, in elementary school under the direction of Mrs. Swearhouse, in high school with Mr. John H. Astor, at the University of Windor under the fine hands of Sir Patrick Lrase, and finally, for many years now, with the Sangerfåst Singers of Lourds who practice each Tuesday and perform in St. Paul's the last Sunday of every month. I am a contralto tenor with what has been called an exceptional range. My forté is Brahms, I like to think, but seldom do I get the chance to actually sing his fine works. I am . . . well, my age hardly matters . . . and my voice seems to be improving still. This is one of the wonders of singing. Age does not detract but enhances performance.

      My madrigal group is an odd assortment. The oldest member, Mrs. Clementine Janitor, sings alto with a berry-like essence remarked on frequently by those who cover our performances. She sweetens the otherwise dour tones required by madrigals. Her height is of no concern to anyone and our appearance on stage less important by far than the effect of the music we gift to our audiences. Mariadni Jocelyn Jonesfeel, at eighteen the youngest member of our ensemble, sings soporano with a vigor and a blossoming strength to shake the fruit off the tree. We no less than she love to watch her perform. We catch ourselves losing our places at times listening to the sauverinity of her notes. Usually with lips made bright and dark hair, and in a translucent dress of white, and shoes of ruby red, she stands with perfect poise, tall and erect, before her audiences and sings of gods, of war, of love, and of, I blush to speak of it, lust and longing. She does so deliberately to intrigue her audience.

      The third member I will mention, the middle-aged Jacks Johanson, deserves a lengthy introduction. He died at the hospital when he was born but was revived and now lives in the inner city with his mother. She provides for him and helps him with his toilette. She cooks, bakes, washes, cleans, and in every way actively engages herself in making Jacks's life easy enough to allow him to continue providing the bass lines for our lovely songs.

      He seems to have died twice, once as I mentioned and another time when he fell out of a car door at high speed, although the latter has never been corroborated and he refuses to speak of it if someone unwittingly introduces the subject. Jacks's is not a handsome face as handsome goes. He sports a shaggy head of tan hair. His eyes are set one close to his nose and the other far from it. His digit, I am told, is enormous, and active at the most unusual times. His ears are very small with no lobs as far as I can tell. His hands are smaller still, with pencil-thin fingers. His shoulders, on the other hand, are massive, bending forward with the strength and width of a shelf of rock. Sadly, having extra thin legs and pelvis, he struggles with balance and more than once has fallen into the front row seats before anyone can reach out to support him. He wears size twenty-one shoes and his upper arms bulge from sheer strength and contained energy. He sings well, too, and we are all glad that he is still with the group.

      I am the oldest member. I make all the arrangements for travel and accommodation and I, too, attempt to save the group money by having as many of us share a single room as possible. We will be in Albuquerque this month performing for the president's cup there. I look forward immensely to the challenge.        

No Purchase of Port

No Purchase of Port

       by Portugal Pete

                        he sat on the fence

                        it didn't make sense

                        that the alien greys

                        were imposing their says

                        on man's ways

                        and modes of expense

The Muslim cleric organized the event. The young choirboy, Mullah, now seventeen, drove the car. The remote control in the minaret, handled by the cleric's personal bodyguard, detonated the device. The designate building, the British Consulate, blew up and all its facade of windows and plastic and tin flipped into the wind.

       In heaven Mullah sat bandaged up and sore at a roadside tavern where he had finished some milk with a bit of freneet in it. God came up to him. He pulled up in a vehicle definitely divine, white, long, and quiet of propulsion. He sat down, God did, and ordered port.

       "A little glass for now," He said to the waiter. "We can order more if the mood persists." Nobody spoke. God drank and put down His empty glass. Immediately He called for more.

       "Bring us a bottle of Portugal's best," He said, smiling. He looked at His watch and then thought better of it. He pulled His floppy sleeve over it so that He would not be tempted to consult it. The weather held. Rain and some wind had been forecast and so things had turned out. The umbrella over the table kept the misty rain off them. The umbrella read, "Seemore's Honeydew Pale Ale." The canopy's colors, yellow and ochre, appealed to the eyes.

       "The good thing about the yellow streets," God said, "is that you couldn't tell if a dog pissed on it, eh?" He laughed at His own joke. No one else seemed interested, or at least not impressed. I must stop trying to impress people, God thought to Himself. The man with Mullah rose to go.

       "I've got it," God said, reaching into His pocket for His billfold. He took it out and put a twenty on the table, enough for all the drinks and more. Mullah still had not had any of the port.

       "Aren't you having any?" God said, pointing at the bottle. In it the purple liquid reflected the light and would not let it in. Mullah looked at God as if He were stupid. He blinked in the mist that wet his face.

       "I don't drink, You Know-it-all! Don't You know anything about the Earth?" He waited for God to answer, unaware that his statement might hurt or intimidate someone of God's stature.

       "Sorry! I forgot. I guess I should pay more attention to such things but I plumb forgot whom I was speaking to! Of course! Muslims don't drink alcohol. How silly of Me. Waiter! Please Come and remove the port from this table. What might I offer you instead? A bit of milk? Some goat's cheese? A large portion of tea and leavened bread?  Crusty rolls dipped in corn syrup? Whey?" Mullah nodded.

       "Well? Which one?" God said, starting to sound a little out of sorts.

       "Whatever You have," Mullah said. God rolled His eyes and ordered water and pork-free scones.

       "Throw in some sardines," He called to the waiter's back. Soon Mullah became less belligerent. He deigned to look on his Lord for the first time with something akin to affection. He reached over and touched His sleeve before addressing Him the next time.